Website Design Services

The Office of Advancement provides web design and development services for departments, programs and centers within the School. By combining usability, design and interactive best practices with the ease-of-use, power and flexibility of the Drupal content management system (CMS), SAS staff delivers accessible web experiences that engage their audiences and further institutional goals.

To request a web project, please contact designservices@sas.upenn.edu. A member of the Advacenment office will contact you to schedule a consultation meeting, during which we will work with you to develop your communication goals, define project milestones, identify departmental liaisons and coordinate communication and decisions-making procedures. Each stage in the process provides opportunities for review and feedback, allowing us – and you – to fine-tune your department’s website.

The steps that lead to the launch of a new website can vary considerably based upon the requirements and scope of the project, but most website projects consist of the following phases:

Discovery

Define audience, content needs and functionality requirements

Assign roles, responsibilities and review process

Identify sources of content

Design

Create site architecture

Identify content

Develop layout and visual design

Develop

Apply visual design to website templates

Customize the Drupal CMS

Load initial content

Deploy

Train content departmental staff

Final technical and security review

Launch website

Updating content over time

Drupal provides all of the tools necessary to maintain your new website, and the Advancement office will offer training to designated faculty and staff, enabling you to create, update and maintain website content through Drupal’s easy-to-use browser-based interface.

Timeline

We typically plan a timeline of no more than six months for most websites, but this can vary based on website complexity, current workload and the availability of department or program stakeholders to provide timely input. Throughout the project you will be regularly apprised of progress, milestones and what’s required of you and your department, such as feedback, content and decisions.

Launching your new site

Prior to launching the new site, we will train departmental staff on how to use the site and work with you to ensure that content and resources from your current website are properly migrated to the new site. We will perform a final technical and security review and schedule a launch date.